STACK #126 Apr 2016

DVD & BD

FEATURE

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NIGHTCRAWLing When Dan Gilroy first heard about the murky, nocturnal world of freelance news reporters – the TV version of paparazzi who are armed with video cameras and nicknamed ‘nightcrawlers’ – who race to the scene of murders, car crashes and fires to film footage for news programmes, he knew instinctively that it was fertile ground for a film.

filming become the lead stories on local Los Angeles news, so if there’s a demand to watch this, who am I to judge them? Or to say what they’re doing is wrong?  “Obviously Lou’s character crosses the line at certain points and drifts into a world that’s amoral, but I never wanted to portray them or the news media or even Lou’s character in that way.  “I never wanted to put a moral label on it and say, ‘This is wrong.’ I think once a filmmaker applies immorality to something it stops the viewers from being able to make a decision for themselves. 

A few years ago I heard about these people called ‘nightcrawlers’, who’d drive around Los Angeles at night at 100mph with these scanners going. Just as a screenwriter, I thought, ‘That’s a really interesting world,’ but I didn’t exactly know what to do with it,” says Dan Gilroy.  “It was part of an idea. For me, ideas come piecemeal; they don’t come fully formed, and I didn’t know what to do with it until I thought of the character to plug into it, which was Lou.  “Once that character plugged into the world, it was like two parts

“We wanted to create as realistic a portrayal as possible of this little niche market and the Los Angeles media world and let people decide for themselves who the villain is and what the issues are.” Working with Gyllenhaal was an “intense” and deeply rewarding collaboration, Gilroy says. The actor lost 30lbs to play the role because he wanted Lou to have a gaunt, hungry look as befitting a down at heel drifter who is desperate to succeed.  “[Jake] respected the script and not one word got changed. He approached it like a play, so I was extraordinarily happy to work with him because he respected the work, and I wanted to respect his ability to come in and breathe life into it in a way that I was not capable of. As an example, the weight loss – that was Jake’s idea.” He wrote the part of Nina Romina, the TV news boss who encourages Lou to bring her more and more exclusive, edgy footage, with his wife, actress Rene Russo, in mind. “I wrote the part for her because I always saw Nina as somebody who had a really tough exterior. Just like we were always trying to find the human side of Lou; I always wanted to find the human side of Nina."  Nightcrawler marks Gilroy’s debut as a director. His previous credits as a writer include Freejack , The Fall , Two for the Money , Real Steel and The Bourne Legacy .

of an atom that fit together, and suddenly it just made total sense to me and I knew what I wanted to do with the world and the character.” The result is Nightcrawler and the central, unforgettable character is Lou (played brilliantly by Jake Gyllenhaal), an ambitious young man who wants to succeed and live the American dream – even if it means filming other people’s nightmares.   When Lou chances across a freeway accident and sees a veteran nightcrawler, Joe Loder (Bill Paxton), filming the police attempts to rescue the trapped and injured driver, he’s intrigued and fascinated. He quizzes Loder about how much he makes from

We wanted to create as realistic a portrayal as possible of this little niche market...

was a horrific car crash in which three girls had been ejected from a car after hitting a wall head on. I’ve got to be honest: I don’t think I’ll ever get that image out of my head.  “I think Jake and Robert and I were rather stunned, watching it, but the gentleman who filmed it very professionally got out of the car, shot the footage, edited the footage within five minutes, downloaded it, and sold it to a number of television stations. 

selling the footage to the local news channels and immediately decides that he’s found his calling. Lou steals a bicycle and exchanges it for a video camera and sets out to become a nightcrawler. Before filming, Gilroy,

“Now, the gentleman who does this, I don’t judge him, and actually he’s become a friend of mine. He and the other people who do this very much see themselves

Gyllenhaal and director of photography Robert

Elswit, spent time with real nightcrawlers on the streets of Los Angeles after dark. It provided invaluable insight into the world they were about to portray. “It was bloodcurdling,” he says. “The first call we went to

as providing a service, and they legitimately are providing a service. In

their minds the stories that they’re

• Nightcrawler is out April 1

APRIL 2015 JB Hi-Fi www.jbhifi.com.au

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